Norfolk Woodland Burial Park wants to develop seven hectares of agricultural land at Old Church Road.

But Hainford Parish Council has objected to the proposals and has collected 270 signatures on a petition against the plans.

Broadland District Council’s planning committee will discuss the application at a public meeting on Wednesday, August 15 from 9.30am, at its council offices in Yarmouth Road, Thorpe St Andrew.

A Hainford council spokesman said: “We have objected to these proposals because we believe this will inevitably threaten the peace and quality of life for villagers by bringing significant volumes of traffic through the village from all corners of Norfolk.

“A recent application to develop a similar facility at Canham Hill, on the northern outskirts of Norwich, was thrown out by the Planning Inspectorate on the grounds that there was no evidence of need which could not be met by existing facilities, including those at Colney.”

However, David Evans, from Chartered Planning Consultancy, the agent for the applicant, said that, while he understood the parish council’s concerns, the proposals were low scale and would only involve four funerals a week.

He said: “There is a huge demand for burial spaces in the area. The creation of a woodland burial park would include extensive tree planting, so the village would get a huge, new recreational resource, and two low key buildings.

“The capacity at the hall, one of the buildings we propose, is just 150 people. If you divide that by four, the average number of people per car, then you are only looking at about 35 cars in the village four times a week. That’s the scale of it. It’s a low key proposal.

“Canham Hill was very large-scale and would have been an urban cemetery. If we were putting in an application such as that, we would expect to get it shot down.”

Are you in dispute over a planning application? Call reporter David Bale on 01603 772427 or email david.bale2@archant.co.uk.